Morning Glory
by ruth baulding
Summary: Perverse variation on an uncivilized! and yet strangely popular literary theme.


**Morning Glory**

* * *

**Dedication: ** _I have no excuse for my behavior, Masters. But if you search your feelings, you will discover that it is all **pronker**_**'_s _**_fault._

* * *

He should have known it was gonna be one of those kriffed-up kinda days when the elite commando recon scouts came back before dawn with their knickers in a twist.

Well, not their knickers, per se. But definitely the standard issue GRA armor. Greaves and gauntlets askew, breastplates and pauldrons dented, helms cockeyed, and codpieces distinctly catawampus.

Anakin Skywalker, Grand General of the Republic's glorious Army, Knight of the Jedi Order, and the Chosen One of the Force, had seen a lotta weird stuff in his day. But he wasn't sure he ever seen something that could leave _sucker_ marks all over Kaminoan clone armor. "Report," he barked over the grumble and roar of the heavy transports crawling up the incline behind them.

"The road's impassable," Slab informed him, succinctly.

His twin brother Wonker agreed. "Blockage at the summit – no way we're gettin' past that."

"Avalanche?" the young Jedi asked, impatient. They were packing grenade launchers and some pretty choobazi thermal explosives, for Force's sake.

"Ah… not exactly, General." Slab was hedging now.

"Not …exactly?" Anakin growled.

Pyro came to his brothers' rescue. "Look, sir, it's not an obstruction. It's more like a.. hostile encampment."

"Yessir… and it has tentacles, sir."

Yup. _That_ kind of kriffed up day. Kriff it all to the nine hells. "Okay. I need to confer with General Kenobi. Bring the line to a halt and pitch camp. And I want you three on stand-by. If we gotta do this the dirty way… well, I want the right men for the job."

All three elite clones looked exchanged an enigmatic look, one that told their young General that even a lifetime's behavioral conditioning and a strong dose of Jango Fett's incomparable DNA would not measure up to the unspeakable horror ahead.

"Right," he muttered, slogging back along the line to the rearguard and the one person in this whole kriffing cavalcade who might have the balls to deal with the situation.

* * *

"Tentacles," Obi-Wan repeated, that peculiar far-away look in his half-hooded eyes. He reached up to stroke absently at his beard, tugging a bit at the longest hairs on his chin.

"You got it, Master."

The older man's eyes warmed a little with mirth, as they always did at the use of the technically superceded honorific, but he continued to gaze into the Force with vexatious placidity. "I see."

Anakin was more of a doer than a seer. "Considering the time constraints, and the desperate circumstances, I think we should just go ahead and blow it sky-high," he suggested, infusing his tone with just the right degree of nonchalance.

"It may be a sentient being, Anakin."

Kriff again. Obi-Wan was inordinately fond of the _no civilian casualties_ rule. "Look, Master, a few stray tentacles is hardly collateral damage. Three good C8's right up the thing's wazoo, and we can move the whole line straight through. Get those reinforcements to our troops and the relief supplies to the natives."

An ordinary mortal would have been instantly incinerated by the look this earned the speaker, but fortunately he was the Chosen One and impervious to his former mentor's repertoire of withering expressions. "There are _other_ means of hurdling an obstacle, besides blowing it out of one's path, Anakin."

Yeah, right. He rolled his eyes, anticipating the _vicissitudes of war_ _and the virtues appropriate thereto_ lecture, but apparently even The Negotiator was a bit footsore and battle weary this evening.

"I told the men to make camp here. But we don't have _time_ for scruples," Anakin pressed.

As always, Obi-Wan ignored his advice.

* * *

That's when the weather decided to up and start kriffing _raining,_ as though the whole situation weren't dismal enough without meteorological enhancement. The men cowered beneath the heavy transports, sulking or else playing with chance cubes. Anakin paced up and down the muddy ruts of their narrow cliffside trail, peering through the mists at the undefined blockage that lay ahead and then stalking back to the makeshift officers' tent where Obi-Wan indulged in _research._

He thrust the self-sealing flap aside with sullen vehemence. "Okay, so what the kriff is that thing?" he demanded.

A deft flick of the wrist sent Obi-Wan's datapad, with the open link to the supercruiser's database, into Anakin's grip. He scowled darkly over the contents, reading through to the end and then tossing the device back at his friend.

"So kriffing what?"

"There is really no warrant for such offensive language, Anakin."

"Look, Obi-Wan." The young Knight could feel his dangerous mood deteriorating rapidly. "I don't give a flying fark if the natives consider this thing a _deity._ Divine manifestation of Morning Glory, my arse. Let's just blow it up and get on with business. We have _lives_ to save."

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan was affronted by his former padawan's brazen disregard for local religious belief. "We are _not_ going to obliterate their god. Without acute provocation, anyway."

The fact that the senior Jedi would append this latter qualification to his statement was an alarming sign of the moral decay insidiously creeping up on all of them in time of war. Anakin shoved the implication aside, grateful for the chink in Obi-Wan's defenses. "Master, believe me. This thing is _provocative._ I sent my best three recon scouts up there to scope it out… and they came back _changed men._ It's an abomination."

A deep sigh. Obi-Wan ran a hand through his hair. "It also happens to be a local deity. We must respect indigenous lifeways so far as expedient."

"You're gonna be the death of me, Master. What are we supposed to do, _negotiate?"_

A defiant lift of the chin, something Anakin recognized as a sign of trouble ahead. "Perhaps."

And that settled that. They were gonna kriffing negotiate. With tentacles. In the rain. Muttering, Anakin followed his friend out into the uncooperative elements.

* * *

The local deity was a crafty barve, that much was plain; when they drew near the summit of the pass, only a few limp green tendrils were visible in the dawn light, coiling mutely in the dreary mud puddles at the trail's ragged edge.

Neither Jedi was fooled by the primitive subterfuge. The Force vibrated with Life Writ Large, as in very large. Very, very large, and … well…

Anankin hissed between his teeth and glanced sideways. That _knowing_ look in Obi-Wan's eye only exacerbated his bad feeling about this. He had heard the tales, the kind of thing spacers liked to swap in cantinas, the sort of thing Shmi would never have tolerated as fit subject matter for her son'e relatively virgin ears… "Uh oh. This is _not good," _ he announced, hoping that Obi-Wan would abort the mission and let him blow the thing up forthwith.

No such luck. One or two tendrils were already writhing lovingly about his master's scuffed boots, delicately prying at the buckles, but Master Kenobi had to stick to the Rules. "It is most certainly sentient, Anakin, and we must comport ourselves accordingly. We cannot countenance the destruction of innocent life, for however elevated a purpose."

Kriff. Anakin felt that the particular subclause of the Precepts classifying this thing as a sentient creature ought to be excised; surely a lascivious nerve ganglion and the requisite superfluity of appendages was not really a vessel of the Living Force in the same way that any other free citizen of the Republic was, quite. "It can't even talk, Master!" he objected.

"The ability to speak is no indicator of intelligence, Anakin… I need not enumerate examples, I presume?"

"_So how_ exactly do you think you're going to negotiate with it?" He folded his mechno arm over his flesh one and waited for the brilliant rebuttal. "Direct mind to mind contact?"

"Perhaps." Kriff, what a smug barve Obi-Wan could be in one of his moods.

The Thing, meantime, did not seem to entertain such strictly platonic aspirations. A more daring extremity was making concerted attack upon the Jedi master's belt buckle. Obi-Wan swatted it away with a muffled imprecation.

"You know, Master, I've seen this story before and it always ends the same way. There's no need for a grand sacrificial gesture."

The acute arch of Obi-Wan's raised brow and the smoldering frigidity of his stare might have reduced a lesser being to ash. Anakin feigned impertubablity, but the look had a distinctly incendiary effect upon the writhing local deity. Several more massive limbs emerged from hiding and snaked salaciously along the ground, suckered undersides fairly pulsating with desire.

"Ugh, Master! Let's just blitz it and be done!"

"A Jedi does not kill in cold blood."

"This hardly counts as _cold_ blood… Kriff it, Master, you're starting to make me think you _like _ this kinda thing," Anakin snarled, immediately expunging the disturbing thought as soon as he had uttered it. Another little voice deep, deep inside his head wondered why the Divine Manifestation of Morning Glory was not making similar overtures at _him._

Must be partial to older men. Yeah, that was it.

The new creepers were joined by others, and yet others, the totality of the creature only gradually revealing itself, until the whole horizon was a mass of trembling green feelers, wriggling and coiling and reaching and groping, thousands upon thousands of convex sucker-pads pulsing faintly with a nexus of raw appetite, an insatiable hunger.

"Anakin." Oh no. "Return to the line and mobilize the troops. I'll handle this."

"Obi-Wan! No! You can't –"

"There are lives at stake, Anakin. Go back and lead the battalion; you will know when to move forward. " Obi-Wan's face was a stoic mask of calm. "There will likely be a significant disturbance in the Force."

The very notion of abandoning his friend to such a vile fate stuck in Anakin's gullet – but Obi-Wan had not been his teacher for nothing. Duty came first, even in such dire straits. Jedi decorum prevented any effusive expression of gratitude or love; they were limited to a brief exchange of hands upon arms, a mute half-embrace.

And then Anakin turned and fled, leaving his brother to face the slavering maw of tentacles alone, and with no defense but his 'saber and his natural prowess.

* * *

Wonker, Slab, and Pyro had the effrontery to enquire after general Kenobi's whereabouts as soon as Anakin returned to base camp.

"He's _handling_ the situation," came the acerbic reply. Anakin hadn't the heart to detail the bitter reality of his friend's sacrifice. Actually, he hadn't the stomach either, being straightforward in his own passions, all of which bore the sacred appellation Padme.

"Right," Wonker replied, battening down his bucket and nodding at his comrades to do the same.

"I want the heavy transports and the infantry ready to march at my order. We'll be going in hot," the young General ordered, covering his own dread with the bustle and clamor of war. "Let's move it, people!"

Soon the company was in turmoil all about him. He had only to kneel upon the sodden muddy ground and wait for the inevitable signal, the abrupt shifting in the Force's currents.

It took longer than he expected, but when it came, there was no mistaking the moment. The universal Life shook with such an extremity of ecstatic bliss that Anakin himself almost blacked out, spots swimming before his eyes as his limbs turned to water and the base of his spine blazed into a devastating supernova.

"_Kriiiiiff, Master!" _ he gasped, wrenching mental shields into place and staggering to his feet. He shouted drunkenly at his troops. "Let's go! Go! Go!"

His doughty battalion surged into life around him, lurching upward to the crest of the trail, where the earlier impasse had brought them to a halt. Stumbling along the line in the rearguard, he barely registered the fact that they had penetrated enemy territory and passed through without resistance until his own mud-crusted boots almost tripped over a stray tendril lying besotted and languid in the path, rippling with a slow pulse of satiety. He gave it a distasteful nudge with one toe and watched it slide docilely away into shadow.

Only when the last of the transports had clanked its way over the now unguarded pass did he allow his thoughts to turn toward his poor master. His heart thumped uncomfortably against his ribs, fear and anger warring for dominance in his breast.

But his perturbation was unfounded. A moment later, Obi-Wan emerged from the vague direction of the creature's center, the signature Kenobi swagger distinctly uncrimped, his hair not even badly ruffled, one hand just making some last adjustment to his fly, as though he had just made a quick pit stop on the roadside. Not a single ovoid bruise marred his complexion, or what could be seen of it beneath the prim Jedi tunics; not a hint of traumatic vulnerability could be discerned in his Force aura; not the faintest smudge tarnished the purity of his 'saber hilt, which slapped rhythmically against his thigh as he strode up the step embankment to Anakin's position.

"Master! I – I thought – I mean, I've heard the spacer's tales and, and…"

"Relax, Anakin. You've allowed your imagination to run amok."

Oh. But… "But I felt.. and then…how did you…?"

"Aggressive negotiations, my very young friend," Obi-Wan blithely informed him, striding confidently forward in the wake of the GRA convoy, the slightest suggestion of a prowling slink in his fluid gait.

"But!" Anakin jogged to catch up, feeling unaccountably inadequate in the face of such astoundingly, utterly masterful diplomatic acuity.

Behind them, the last of the tentacles twisted sensuously in on itself with a shuddering contentment, and slid back into the obscurity of its sultry lair as morning sun broke gloriously through the last wisps of raincloud.

**Finis**


End file.
